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Born in 1862 in London, he was the son of one of the most powerful politicians in the Prussian Empire. While Foreign Minister for Prussia, his father Count Albrecht von Bernstorff had earned the ire of Prince Bismarck in the Prussian constitutional crisis of 1859-1866. Overestimating his political strength, von Bernstorff resigned in a spat over the constitution with the expectation to force his will on the Prussian government. However, the Emperor accepted Bernstorff’s miscalculated challenge and appointed Otto von Bismarck chancellor and foreign minister. For the rest of his life, Count Albrecht von Bernstorff would criticize Bismarck’s Machiavellian style of governing. In 1862, the elder Bernstorff served as ambassador at the Court of St James's. For the next eleven years young Bernstorff grew up in England until his father’s death in 1873. After moving back to Germany Johann von Bernstorff went to the humanistic gymnasium in Dresden from which he graduated with a baccalaureate in 1881. While von Bernstorff’s dream had always been to pursue a diplomatic career, the family feud with Bismarck made an appointment to the diplomatic service impossible.[1] As a result he joined the Prussian Army for the next eight years serving in an artillery unit in Berlin.

After being elected a member of the Reichstag he finally succeeded in convincing the Bismarcks to settle the dispute with the long dead father.[2] In 1887, von Bernstorff married Jeanne Luckemeyer, a German-American.[3] She was a native of New York City and daughter of a wealthy silk merchant. [4] His first diplomatic assignment was Constantinople where he served as military attaché. From 1892 to 94 he served at the German embassy in Belgrade. After a brief assignment to St. Petersburg (1895-97), von Bernstorff became counselor of the embassy in London (1902-06). Before he took his assignment in the United States, he served as consul general in Cairo (1906-08).[5] Despite the problems his family had with the Bismarcks, von Bernstorff basically agreed with Bismarck’s policies, in particular with the decision to found the German Reich without Austria in 1871. As a diplomat, von Bernstorff adamantly supported Anglo-German rapprochement and considered the policies of Wilhelm II “reckless.”[6] Bernstorff's diplomatic skills were noted in Berlin throughout the First Moroccan Crisis in 1905 and he was appointed the German ambassador to the United States in 1908.[7]

He was recalled to Germany on July 7, 1914, but returned on August 2 upon the outbreak of the First World War. It was later revealed that he had been recruited into intelligence work and ordered to assist the German war effort by all means necessary. He was also provided with a large slush fund to finance these operations. He began with attempts to assist German-Americans who wished to return home to fight by forging passports to get them through the Allied blockade of Germany.

Publicly, Bernstorff's ambassadorship in Washington was characterised by a diplomatic battle with the British ambassador, Sir Cecil Spring Rice, with both men attempting to influence the American government's position regarding the war.[8] Later, however, as the Blockade began to prevent American munitions manufacturers from trading with Germany, the Ambassador began financing sabotage missions in order to obstruct arms shipments to Germany's enemies. Some of the plans included destroying the Welland Canal, which circumvents Niagara Falls. This was attempted in September 1914, but failed. It was also in 1914 that the German diplomatic mission began supporting the Expatriate Indian movement for independence.

Bernstorff was assisted by Captain Franz von Papen (who would later be Chancellor of Germany) and Captain Karl Boy-Ed, a naval attaché. The commercial attaché, Heinrich Albert would be the finance officer for the sabotage operations. Papen, as well as the German consulate in San Francisco, are known to have been extensively involved in the Hindu German Conspiracy, especially in the Annie Larsen gun running plot. Although Bernstorff himself officially denied all knowledge, most accounts agree this was a part of the German intelligence and sabotage offensive in America against Britain and Bernstorff was among those intricately involved. Following the capture of the Annie Larsen and confiscation of its cargo, Bernstorff made efforts to recover the $200,000 worth of arms insisting they were meant for Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck in German East Africa. This was futile, however, and the arms were auctioned off.

In December of the same year, Bernstorff received a cable from the German Foreign Office instructing him to target the Canadian Railways.

On January 1, 1915, the Roebling Wire and Cable plant in Trenton, New Jersey was blown up. On January 28, an American merchant ship carrying wheat to Britain was sunk.

In 1915, Bernstorff also helped organize what became known as the Great Phenol Plot, an attempt to divert phenol from the production of high explosives in the United States (which would end up being sold to the British), and at the same time prop up several German-owned chemical companies that made aspirin and its precursor salicylic acid.

Some of Bernstorff's other activities were exposed by the British Secret Service when they obtained and distributed to the press a photograph of him "in a swimming costume with his arms around two similarly dressed women, neither of whom was his wife". (MI6, The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909 - 1949, Keith Jeffery, Bloomsbury, 2010 p 113).

Bernstorff was returned home on February 3, 1917, when Woodrow Wilson severed diplomatic relations with Germany. Upon receiving the news, Colonel Edward House wrote to him,

"The day will come when people in Germany will see how much you have done for your country in America."

He assumed his position as ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in 1917, Bernstorff conceded in believing that the policy against the Armenians was that of exterminating the race.[9] Bernstorff provided a detailed account of the massacres in his memoirs entitled, Memoirs of Count Bernstorff. In his memoirs, Bernstorff describes his discussion with Talat Pasha after much of the massacres concluded and wrote that Talat Pasha said, "What on earth do you want? The question is settled, there are no more Armenians." In his conversation with Talat Pasha: "When I kept on pestering him about the Armenian question, he once said with a smile: 'What on earth do you want? The question is settled, there are no more Armenians'"[9]

Bernstorff was proposed as Foreign minister in Philipp Scheidemann's Cabinet in 1919, but he refused this post and left diplomatic service.[7] He became a founding member of the German Democratic Party (Deutsche Demokratische Partei) and a member of the German Parliament in 1921-28. He was the first President of the German Association for the League of Nations, President of the World Federation of Associations of the League of Nations[5] and member of every German delegation to the League of Nations.[10]

Bernstorff, who was explicitly mentioned by Hitler as one of those men bearing "the guilt and responsibility for the collapse of Germany",[12] left Germany in 1933 after the Nazis took over power and moved to Geneva, Switzerland, where he died on October 6, 1939.